Opportunity Knocks (but your engine won’t)
Quill Plains Biofuel Cooperative Ltd.

 

 

In order to meet the Federal Government’s 5% renewable fuel standard for gasoline by 2010, Canadian producers will need to produce 2 billion litres of ethanol per year. Estimates showed that at the end of 2007 production was only half that amount. With biofuel production showing the potential to bring significant benefits to producers and other businesses in their area, the Quill Plains Economic Development Alliance formed the Quill Plains Biofuel Cooperative Ltd. and applied to the Agriculture Council of Saskatchewan for funding under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Biofuels Opportunities for Producers Initiative (BOPI).

 

“We have to produce the grain for ethanol production because of the federal mandate,” explains Elaine Cales, Secretary of the Quill Plains Biofuel Co-operative Ltd. “If we don’t have a facility at our doorstep, we’ll be shipping that grain elsewhere. The freight costs our farmers so much. Right now it costs them 35 to 40 cents a bushel to ship to Belle Plains.”

 

The Alliance, a group consisting of members from five rural municipalities and three urban centres within the Carlton Trail REDA area, gathered community support and a New Generation Cooperative was formed. The newly-named Quill Plains Biofuel Cooperative Ltd. was off and running, with the knowledge that a sustainable cooperative ethanol operation was dependant upon an accurate business plan.

 

The cooperative was based on another cooperative association from the area, the LeRoy Agra Pork Co-operative Ltd (LAPC).  “Because LeRoy Agra Pork Cooperative Ltd was so successful,” Cales says, “we thought, ‘Why don’t we use the same concept for ethanol to apply for The Biofuels Opportunities for Producers Initiative (BOPI) grant?’ ”It is hoped the Quill Plains cooperative will be as successful as the LAPC, a cooperative venture that has resulted in a successful farrow-to-finish hog operation and feed mill in the LeRoy area, supplied in part with feedstock from the 100 members of the LAPC.

 

BOPI funding was approved by ACS for the development of the Quill Plains Biofuel Cooperative Limited Ethanol Plant business plan, which became more of a feasibility study once grain prices rose in summer of 2007.

 

The business plan examined a proposed ethanol production facility capable of producing 50 to 60 million litres annually. Five to six million bushels of the grain of choice (in this case, wheat) would be trucked in by local area farmers – about 200 of them at current estimates -- who could collectively own 20% or more of the project. 200 non-investors would also supply the facility with wheat.

 

In addition to ethanol, the facility would produce 50,000 – 55,000 tonnes of distillers grains, a high-grade, grain-based protein feed source for livestock. Distillers grains are an alternative to animal-based proteins, which many producers are opting not to feed their livestock. Once processed, the distillers grains would stimulate growth in the local pork and beef industries: there are 15 hog barns alone within a 25-mile radius of Watson.

 

In addition, there’s the spin-off benefits from construction that would occur in the estimated one-and-a-half to two years it would take to build the production facility.

 

 “Besides employment in construction, there will be benefit to services in the community –buying from the local stores, hotels, restaurants, and all that,” Cales announces. “And then, when it’s complete, around 20 full time jobs.”

 

The business plan was recently completed, and plans are now in place to present the findings first to the members of Quill Plains Biofuel Cooperative and then to the community, mostly through town hall meetings. If it is accepted, this would be the start of the first ethanol cooperative in Saskatchewan.

 

 

 

 

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